Union Beach students resume education in new school

Displaced students resume education

Nov. 20, 2012

Katie Puglia talks about superstorm Sandy with her fourth-grade students on their first day at Saint Catherine's School, the temporary school for Union Beach Memorial School students, on Monday. / Tanya Breen/staff photographer

Written by

Terry Gauthier Muessig

@terrymuessAPP

Visit Home & School, blogs.app.com/learning, for more about what’s going on in our schools.

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MIDDLETOWN — More than half of Union Beach’s 720 students got their first ride Monday on a bus as they headed out of town to go to school.

William Weberlist, 6, a first-grader at Memorial School, was one of the first to arrive at St. Catherine’s School in the Port Monmouth section of Middletown. On any normal school day, William would be going to Memorial School on Morningside Avenue in the borough. However, superstorm Sandy left almost 2 feet of water throughout the entire school, causing school officials to scramble to find another facility to house its students, faculty and staff.

William was all smiles on Monday morning as he arrived to his temporary school.

“I’ve been helping at my nana’s house; she had lots of water in her house,” William said, explaining how he kept himself occupied while home for the unexpected 13 days of no school.

St. Catherine’s will house the roughly 400 Memorial School students in kindergarten through fifth grade. The rest were placed at Keyport schools: Central School for the sixth- and seventh-graders, and the eighth-grade class is at Keyport High School. Those students also started classes Monday.

Brian Walsh, the principal of Memorial School, was outside St. Catherine’s to greet all the students coming off the buses, while School Superintendent Joseph Annibale rode one of the buses with the students to the new temporary location.

“All the students on my bus seemed excited to be getting back to school,” Annibale said. The Shamrock Stage Coach Bus Co. and Loori Bus. Co. are being used to transport the students. The bus schedules may have to be altered for earlier arrivals.

“If this — a late-arriving bus — is the only thing we have to worry about, we are doing great,” Annibale said smiling.

The Memorial School rehabilitation project should be completed by January, he said.

St. Catherine School on Shore Acres Avenue has been closed for 13 years for regular school instructions, said Michael Marinelli, the property maintenance supervisor. However, the building is used for the church’s CCD classes. The property has five buildings, including St. Catherine’s Church.

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The Union Beach School District will have to pay for use of the school. Though Walsh did not know the cost, he said it would be absorbed under the school’s insurance.

Walsh, some teachers and the staff had made signs to welcome the students: “Welcome,’’ “Super star students” and “Mustang Pride.”

As her students settled, fourth-grade teacher Katie Puglia greeted each child and gave an overview of what they would be doing in class.

“We really need to discuss what happened,” she said.

Puglia had created posters that looked like a Facebook page, asking students to write down questions they had about the storm, their feelings, or how they were helped after the storm.

The students wrote their answers for the exercise:

“How did the water get so high?”

“I was in Middletown, is my house OK?”

And it seems all the students had one word to describe their feelings about the storm — “sad.”

As a pick-me-up after the assignment, the students were given a new bookbag filled with school supplies, including a calculator, donated by the New Jersey Education Association. All 720 students in the district received the bookbag, according to Marie Bilstan, secretary/treasurer of the NJEA. Bilstan was at the school to help give support to the school staff and its students.

“We have four counties that have been affected by the storm,” Bilstan said. “It is truly amazing how the communities have come out to help support our schools and our schools’ staff that were directly impacted by the storm.”

Lori Klimek, who has been living in Old Bridge since the storm, was one of the parents who chose to drive her son to school. The Klimeks like a huge portion of the families in borough have to clean out, gut or rebuild their homes.

“A lot of us, the parents, have been talking, saying, ‘it will be OK; we are rebuilding,’ ” Klimek said. “The kids have been listening, so they know and have a positive attitude that we will all be OK.”